Trapped Inside the Oval Office, Part 7

Trey Smith

U.S. Executive Branch foreign and military policy is characterized above all by two fatal flaws. In the 1960s Senator William Fulbright criticized the Executive’s "arrogance of power", and this arrogance - combined with ignorance about the countries they attack - has continued until today. U.S. officials regularly try to force local leaders to behave as the Executive wishes, even when these leaders believe it is against their national interests. And the Executive ignores the local public opinion that is increasing the power of anti-U.S. groupings throughout the Third World.

Its second flaw is conducting a short-term, tactics-oriented foreign and military policy at the expense of long-term strategic U.S. interests. For nearly a decade, for example, U.S. Executive military and political leaders were so obsessed with achieving short-term military successes in Afghanistan that they endangered far more important long-term U.S. strategic interests in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

In actual practice U.S. Executive foreign and military policy is above all driven by ambitious politicians, military and intelligence officials looking to further their careers in the short-term, as when David Petraeus managed to become the head of the CIA after totally mismanaging U.S. policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan; bureaucracies fighting vicious turf wars in an attempt to increase their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year; and U.S. corporations seeking to boost next quarter's profits.

Both arrogance and short-term thinking are in dramatic evidence today in what is the U.S. Executive's single greatest strategic error since Vietnam: its waging an expanding war in the 1.8 billion strong, nuclear-armed and oil-rich Muslim world. Its policies are turning hundreds of millions of Muslims against the U.S., including countless potential suicide bombers, as it creates far more enemies than it kills. If Executive actions were protecting the U.S., the numbers of U.S. foes would be decreasing. Instead they are exponentially increasing, and spreading to an increasing number of nations.
~ from America's Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security, by Fred Branfman ~

I will address the issue of arrogance tomorrow via a snippet from an excellent column by Conor Friedersdorf. (Hint: He notes that Dick Cheney and Barack Obama share something in common!) What I will focus on right now is the overarching capitalistic principle of ignoring the long-term to focus on the short-term.

In capitalist America, the ONLY thing that matters is the maximization of short-term profits. At first glance, this would seem short-sighted, but the elites have crafted a mechanism to get around this deficiency: They control the government. Since they exercise this kind of control, it means that they can take dangerous risks -- the kind prone to blow up in one's face -- without worry. If anything might happen to go awry, they simply instruct their political "employees" to bail them out financially and/or retroactively insure they are immune from charges of criminality.

Since this gambit has proven so successful within our borders, they have foisted the same arrangement on the rest of the world! This allows US elites to act with impunity wherever they want to. Laws, treaties, agreements or general societal expectations be damned. They do what they want because they can and they do it often because they think no one can stop them.  (It seems they are right in this regard.)

~

Barack Obama is part of this system and he is a prisoner of it as well. He doesn't want to change the status quo and, even if he did, he certainly couldn't do it unilaterally. But, if he genuinely wanted to slow it down or constrain it to a degree, he HAS the bully pulpit under his feet. The very fact that he could stand on this pulpit, but steadfastly refuses to do so, should tell you all you need to know.

He isn't interested in leading toward the change we can believe in!

This is the conclusion of a miniseries.  Here are the previous entries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

Trapped Inside the Oval Office, Part 6

Trey Smith

As important as it is to understand the U.S. Executive's institutional evil, lawlessness and authoritarianism, however, there is one question that must be addressed first: its claim to be protecting "national security."

For this claim is the foundational rationale of all Executive action. American democracy has become so debased that most Americans passively accept the fact that the public servants whose salaries they pay routinely lie to them; wage losing and murderous wars that waste trillions of dollars that they need at home to make a living and support their families; send their sons and daughters off to be senselessly killed; and routinely break the domestic and international laws in which all Americans claim to believe, and upon which Executive officials base their right to rule.

They accept these Executive Branch violations of the most basic principles upon which their country was founded for one basic reason: they believe Executive Branch leaders are protecting them, that even clearly illegitimate activities are legitimate because they protect U.S. "national security."

So deep is the unconscious need to be protected that the words "national security" have acquired a near-mystical power that overwhelms the undeniable factual evidence that U.S. Executive Branch leaders are endangering not protecting Americans, as they lose U.S. influence around the world.
~ from America's Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security, by Fred Branfman ~

The problem with the term "national security" is that it means one thing for the unwashed masses and something altogether different for the elite. For the former, it means protection from all the bogeymen -- real and imagined -- out there in the big bad world. National Security means that our borders are protected and that terrorists -- real or imagined -- won't attack and harm us.

But this is NOT what the term means for elites. For them, it is ALL about economics. Nothing else factors into it. Not human rights. Not national sovereignty. Not environmental stewardship. Not the democratic process. And most definitely NOT the economic security of the 99 percent!

No, for the powers that be, national security means they are afforded the opportunity to exploit whomever they want whenever they want without any fetters or obstacles placed in their way.

Do you have oil? They want it. Do you have other valuable natural resources? They want that too. Do you have cheap labor for them to exploit? Hand it over. Will you let them pollute your land like there is no tomorrow? You're their best friend!

If they have to kill to get what they want, so be it. Nothing can stand in their way. They won't allow it.

This post is part of a miniseries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Trapped Inside the Oval Office, Part 5

Trey Smith

In seeking to understand the U.S. Executive Branch, and its evil, lawlessness and authoritarianism, it is important to note that we are not delving here into "conspiracy theory". On the contrary. U.S. Executive Branch policy is determined not by conspiracy by a few but rather out of the interaction of hundreds of semi-independent power centers within the bureaucracies and corporate world, the huge agglomeration that Eisenhower termed the "military-industrial complex." Policy emerges as a result of countless meetings, lobbying sessions, phone calls, meals, negotiations, promises of future jobs in the private sector in return for government contracts, forming and breaking alliances, promoting and demoting individuals.

It is also important to note that when we speak of "evil", we are not speaking of evil individuals as normally understood. The term is conventionally applied to the clearly demonic monsters who periodically pop up in world history, most notably of course Hitler and other Nazi leaders, i.e. the standard humanist understanding of what most people call evil.

By contrast, most U.S. Executive Branch leaders tend to be rather conventional types before they join the Executive. Like Mr. Obama most have some feeling for their mates, children and/or dogs, give to charity, and hold accepted beliefs about democracy and the rule of law. They do not lie as a matter of course to family and friends, or commit face-to-face violence against those with whom they disagree.

But in the postwar Executive world one need not be classically evil to do evil. It is institutional evil, e.g., mass murder, conducted by normal individuals which poses the greatest threat to human life, decency, democracy and the rule of law in our time. Top Executive Branch leaders are not motivated by grand theories of “purifying the race” or “thousand year Reichs”, but rather simply succeeding in their jobs, advancing in their careers, making more money, being promoted, and gaining more power. Henry Kissinger obviously did not devastate Indochina because he cared about the wellbeing of the 6 million people he helped kill, wound or make homeless; nor did he wish to promote democracy when supporting a savage police-state in South Vietnam which held more political prisoners than the rest of the world combined. Those who know him best say he was motivated by simple careerism – a desire not to be blamed for the fall of Indochina while in office, and to be admired - and rewarded for - being seen as a “statesman” after leaving it.
~ from America's Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security, by Fred Branfman ~

Branfman is making an argument much like that of Joel Bakan in his book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Bakan contends that corporations are, by their very nature, amoral and anyone who enters the corporate system is forced to act amorally in order to survive. Put another way, we shouldn't focus so much attention on the individual actors in Corporate America; the system itself is structured to be anything but fair, just and humanitarian.

This is what Branfman says about the Executive Branch.  He contends that decent people enter into its web and, once entrapped, they act, think and behave indecently.

In Branfman's view, Barack Obama is one of these decent souls who has come to find himself trapped inside the Oval Office.  When Obama came into the White House, he really wanted to instill hope and change, but the nature of the institution itself plus the intransigence of conservative Republicans  thwarted his efforts. Obama is now a prisoner who can't move in the directions he genuinely wants to go.

While I will grant there is some truth to this analysis, I submit that Branfman is giving Obama far more credit than he deserves!  In my view, Barack Obama is Machiavellian and I don't write this as a Monday morning quarterback either.  Back in November 2008, I wrote,

So, I’m girding myself for the new age of Obamapology. Each time our new president does something that no bona fide progressive would approve of — like starting a new war in Pakistan or re-engaging Afghanistan or turning the federal mint over to the insurance industry — the Obamapologists will swing into action to inform us that President Barack had no other choice and how much worse it would have been under President John. The Obamapologists will urge us to turn a blind eye because the grand O is really about hope and change.

You see, I never bought into his "hope and change" gambit. Like many others on the Left, his presidency has gone much the way I expected, though in several areas, it is even worse than I ever imagined!

While I certainly agree that the institutional structure of the Executive Branch is unethical, undemocratic and immoral, my chief complaint is that too few of the "decent" people who enter into or work closely with it are willing to stand up for their supposed professed beliefs.  As soon as they see how difficult the fight will be, they cave in and just go with the nefarious flow.

For me, this is why the Obama administration viciously has gone after federal whistleblowers like Thomas Drake, Bradley Manning and now Edward Snowden.  These ARE decent people who decided to stand up to fight against the institution.  Their resolve in exposing the rampant criminality of the Executive Branch is an ever present reminder to Barack Obama that he surrendered with little more than a whimper.  These brave men are a constant reminder to the President how morally weak he actually is!

This post is part of a miniseries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Trapped Inside the Oval Office, Part 4

Trey Smith

The U.S. mass media, dependent upon the Executive for their information and careers, and run by corporate interests benefiting from Executive largesse, predominately convey Executive Branch perspectives on an hourly basis to the American people. Even on the relatively few occasions when they publish information the Executive wishes to keep secret, it has little impact on Executive policies while maintaining the illusion that the U.S. has a "free press". The U.S. Executive is essentially free to conduct its activities as it wishes.
~ from America's Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security, by Fred Branfman ~

Again, as in the previous post of this miniseries, it basically boils down to economics. The mainstream media can't survive without advertisers or mainstream backing. If you challenge the powers that be too consistently and/or too forcefully, the money dries up and you're out of business. So, you play along by the "rules" and, if you are fortunate, the money keeps flowing.

Besides, the corporations who now own the vast majority of the mainstream media are members of the elite anyway. They certainly don't want to support anything that will hinder their ability to ride the gravy train. This is why you rarely see their reporters ask tough questions of the government or other elites. They only want us to know what THEY want us to know.

Every now and then, a major story or scandal blows past their pre-designed boundaries (like the current NSA brouhaha). In these situations, circumstances force them to do something they really don't want to do: report on the underbelly of the beast. They tend to do so in a manner that seeks to minimize the damage as much as possible in the hope that it will blow over quickly which will allow them to move it off the front page or to train their cameras on some meaningless spectacle.

This post is part of a miniseries: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Trapped Inside the Oval Office, Part 3

Trey Smith

The U.S. Executive Branch agencies that conduct U.S. foreign military and domestic police operations - the White House, National Security Council, Pentagon, CIA, Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security, National Security Agency and FBI - have an overall budget of well over $1 trillion, employ 3-4 million people, and spend more money on the military than the next 10 nations combined. Its enormous power has allowed it to operate unilaterally since the end of WWII, with little meaningful oversight or even the knowledge of Congress and the American people.

The Executive has had one overriding purpose since it emerged from the ashes of World War II: to keep foreign governments deemed "pro-U.S." in power, and to weaken or overthrow those considered "anti-U.S." The first key feature of a "pro-U.S." government is that it permits U.S. corporations and Wall Street investors access to its natural resources and cheap labor. As former Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan stated, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." The second is that it allows the U.S. military and spy agencies to operate freely in its territory, including building military bases and conducting clandestine operations.

While convincing its own people that its policies are meant to support “freedom” and “democracy” around the world, its practice has often been exactly the opposite. It has installed and/or supported dozens of brutal, police-state regimes and paramilitary forces in every corner of the globe which are the very antithesis of democracy – including the Somoza family (1936-79) and then Contras in Nicaragua (1980s); death squads in El Salvador (1980s); vicious military regimes in Chile, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil in Latin America from WWII until the 1990s; the Mobutu (1965-97) and South African apartheid regimes (until 1990) in Africa; police-state and military governments in South Vietnam (1956-75), Cambodia (1970-5) and Indonesia (1967 until the present); and the despotic regimes of Mubarak in Egypt (1981-2011), Ben Ali in Tunisia (1987-2011), the Shah of Iran (1952-79), Saudi Arabia (1945-present), and Bahraini (1971-present) in the Middle East. It has also supported the Israeli government’s mistreatment of the Palestinians and refusal to negotiate a settlement based on countless U.N. resolutions.

In general the U.S. Executive prefers to achieve its goals without overt violence. As President Bill Clinton himself later acknowledged with regard to Haiti, for example, his Administration's "free trade" policies featuring NAFTA and the World Trade Organization impoverished hundreds of millions of poor rural and slum dwellers around the world by giving U.S. corporations unprecedented access to Third World markets and labor, and extending loans that enriched local elites while forcing the population as a whole to repay them by cutting health, education and other social services.

But when such nonviolent means have not sufficed to fulfill Executive Branch aims, it has ruthlessly used massive violence to achieve its goals - from dropping 6.7 million tons of bombs on Indochina and invading it with 550,000 troops; imposing and supporting brutal police-state regimes around the world; and, more recently, relying on drone and ground assassination.
~ from America's Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security, by Fred Branfman ~

As I have pointed out again and again to readers, if you want to know WHY government does anything these days, you simply need to follow the money. This may sound simplistic, but economics generally explains the chief motivation. In this case, as Branfman notes, we're talking about a staggering amount of taxpayer dollars per year: over $1,000,000,000,000.

If you happen to be on the receiving end of a portion of this largess, wouldn't you be willing to do or say just about a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g to insure that the spigot is not turn off or even decreased by a smidge? The perception of threat is like having a hen that lays golden eggs! The more threat you can conjure up, the more eggs the hen lays.

And that is why this whole situation is so pernicious. It is not about security. It is not about safety. It is not about freedom. It certainly isn't about democracy. No, the driving force behind all this death, destruction, intimidation and the evisceration of human and civil rights is about GREED. It is about a very small cadre of individuals who lust after more wealth, more power and more control.

I'm serious. If you boil everything down, the rationale is as old as the hills. The rich and powerful want to become richer and more powerful. Anything and anyone who they perceive to be standing in their way is expendable. 

This post is part of a miniseries: Part 1 & Part 2.

Trapped Inside the Oval Office, Part 2

Trey Smith

Famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars reporting on Mr. Obama's Afghanistan Policy Review in the fall of 2009 provides an instructive case-study of just how limited a President's options are when faced with institutional opposition from within the Executive Branch.

Woodward reported that after Mr. Obama had acceded to the military demand for an addition 21,000 troops shortly after taking office, he asked them to produce a set of options that would include a reduced U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. The Pentagon refused to do so and instead began publicly lobbying for an additional 40,000 troops. Joint Chief of Staff head Admiral Mike Mullen first pushed for a troop increase at a September 15 Senate Armed Services hearing. White House aides Rahm Emanuel and Tom Donilon were, Woodward reports, "furious. The president is being screwed by the senior uniformed military, they (said). The generals and admirals are systematically playing him, boxing him in." Mullen apologized and said it wouldn't happen again.

But then two weeks later, on October 1, 2009, U.S. Afghan military commander Stanley McChrystal committed an act of insubordination far more serious than the later Rolling Stone interviews which got him fired. He again publicly lobbied for more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a major speech in London. Woodward reports that "McChrystal's comments marked a seminal moment for the White House staff. What better proof that the military was on a search-and-destroy mission aimed at the president? (National Security Advisor) James Jones said that McChrystal's speech was either “insubordination or stupid. It read like a direct challenge to the president. 'It is a firing offense, but McChrystal won't be fired because we need him.'" Woodward also reported that "Obama felt disrespected and trapped. The White House saw the speech as a scheme on the part of McChrystal, Mullen and Petraeus."

And Mr. Obama was indeed trapped, far more controlled by the military than its actual "Commander-in-Chief". As CIA chief Leon Panetta summed up the situation: "no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it. So just do it. Do what they say." Mr. Obama was thus forced to accede to the Pentagon's harebrained scheme for a "surge" that increased U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 30,000 (with an additional 10,000 from NATO allies) that achieved little and continued to weaken U.S. national security by worsening conditions in neighboring, and far more important, Pakistan.

The logic behind Panetta's "give them what they want" mentality is obvious. A President might conceivably survive another 9/11 or losing in Afghanistan - but not if military sources continually leaked information to the media and Congress blaming it on his or her failure to support the military. And, for the same reason, a President is often "trapped" by the NSA, CIA or any other major Executive agency.
~ from America's Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security, by Fred Branfman ~

I am often amazed that so many of my fellow Americans don't recognize that the military (or spy agencies) -- just like any other business or organization -- wants to grow. It wants more money, more power and more influence. This is why the military brass aren't interested in the concept of peace. A lack of real, perceived or imaginary enemies is a direct threat to their preeminence. As long as they can convince us that there are bogeymen around every corner, too many Americans will give them a free hand to keep us "safe."

How is it that for years our number one priority to stem the flow of terrorism was to get Osama bin Laden and yet, once we got him, we were told that the threat was as great as ever! Each time we kill another "important" leader in the terrorist network and we're told how this death will hamper the command structure, nothing actually changes. One would think that, since we've killed or arrested so many terrorist cogs, the threat would recede, but we are told the precise opposite! The threat is as great now as it was before we took out x, y and z.

It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that it doesn't matter how many terrorist higher ups we kill. We could slaughter thousands at a time and we would still be told that we weren't safe enough yet, that now is not the time to let down our guard.

The institution of the military craves perpetual war because this kind of war insures that the military will be THE prime focus of government. They actively are pursuing a strategy that guarantees to produce tens or hundreds of thousands of people who want nothing more than to avenge the death and destruction we routinely visit upon them. By relentlessly pursuing this strategy, the military-industrial complex guarantees that it will create far more "terrorists" than it can ever kill which means it willfully generates the threat that it says it must protect us from!

This post is part of a miniseries.  If you missed Part 1, go here. 

Trapped Inside the Oval Office, Part 1

Trey Smith

This post and the next 6 (spread over 2 days) will focus on excerpts from a long and penetrating article, America's Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security, by Fred Branfman.

Under Mr. Obama, America is still far from being a classic police-state of course. But no President has done more to create the infrastructure for a possible future police-state. This infrastructure will clearly pose a serious danger to democratic ideals should there be more 9/11s, and/or increased domestic unrest due to economic decline and growing inequality, and/or massive global disruption due to climate change, and/or a President with even less scruples than Mr. Obama.

What gives? How could a fellow who spoke so eloquently of the need for the rule of law when running for President now be presiding over a lawless "industrial-sized killing machine" abroad and a massive threat to civil liberties at home? Why has Mr. Obama made the U.S. even more hated in the Muslim world than when he took office - even though his stated goal in 2009 was to reshape U.S. policy in the region? How is it that both he and Mitt Romney both ran on essentially the same foreign policy, despite significant differences between them on domestic policy?

Much of the answer to such questions lies in something that we rarely do in this nation - seeing the U.S. Executive Branch Mr. Obama nominally heads for what it really is: the most powerful institution in the history of the world, one that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings ("Dollars and Deaths," Cong. Record, 5-14-75, p. 14262), mostly civilians, since 1962 - far more than any other government in the world.

Nothing demonstrates this institution's power more than Mr. Obama himself. The fact that he has so violated his own values and belief system as Commander-in-Chief is not merely a matter of personal hypocrisy; it is a dramatic illustration of how the Executive's institutional violence, secrecy and deceit overwhelm even Presidents who begin their terms with relatively good intentions.

...Americans have been conditioned to focus on the personality of the President, and to see the giant Executive Branch as a mere servant of its "Commander-in-Chief." Countless books and newspaper stories have been written about the differences between the "Reagan", "Carter" or "Clinton" foreign policies. There are of course significant differences between Administrations, though often due as much to differing objective conditions as Presidential desires. But the simple fact is that these differences have been far outweighed by a remarkable consistency in U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II. And a President is far more limited in his options than popular folklore suggests. It is only when one understands the Executive Branch as an institution that one can make sense, not only of Mr. Obama, but much of both America's postwar history and frightening future.

Whether you think Barack Obama is a great president or a horrible one, the thing that should worry you is that he is establishing precedents that will be built upon and expanded under future presidents. If you are concerned about the huge reach of Big Brother today, imagine how much further and deeper that reach will become in the future.

As it stands right now, metadata is being collected on our phone calls and content is being seized and stored in relation to our internet communications. The FBI recently admitted that domestic drones currently are being utilized for surveillance of Americans. If this remains the baseline going forward, what new invasions of privacy are in store for us?

Though I believe that Branfman is giving Obama a lot more credit than he deserves in terms of "his own values and belief system," I do agree that he is a bit of a prisoner of the institutional nature of the Executive Branch. I'll have more to say on this aspect in a later post.